Dal smiled and handed back the dispatch. “Maybe it will improve his temper,” he said, “even if it does give him another fifty years of active life.”
“Well, at least it will take him out of our hair for a while,” Tiger said. “He won’t have time to keep us under too close scrutiny.”
Which, Dal was forced to admit, did not make him too unhappy.
Shipboard rounds kept all three doctors busy. Often, with contact landings, calls, and studying, it seemed only a brief time from sleep period to sleep period, but still they had some time for minor luxuries. Dal was almost continuously shivering, with the ship kept at a temperature that was comfortable for Tiger and Jack; he missed the tropical heat of his home planet, and sometimes it seemed that he was chilled down to the marrow of his bones in spite of his coat of gray fur. With a little home-made plumbing and ingenuity, he finally managed to convert one of the ship’s shower units into a steam bath. Once or twice each day he would retire for a blissful half hour warming himself up to Garv II normal temperatures.
Fuzzy also became a part of shipboard routine. Once he grew accustomed to Tiger and Jack and the surroundings aboard the ship, the little creature grew bored sitting on Dal’s shoulder and wanted to be in the middle of things. Since the early tension had eased, he was willing to be apart from his master from time to time, so Dal and Tiger built him a platform that hung from the ceiling of the control room. There Fuzzy would sit and swing by the hour, blinking happily at the activity going on all around him.
But for all the appearance of peace and agreement, there was still an undercurrent of tension on board the Lancet which flared up from time to time when it was least expected, between Dal and Jack. It was on one such occasion that a major crisis almost developed, and once again Fuzzy was the center of the contention.
Dal Timgar knew that disaster had struck at the very moment it happened, but he could not tell exactly what was wrong. All he knew was that something fearful had happened to Fuzzy.
There was a small sound-proof cubicle in the computer room, with a chair, desk and a tape-reader for the doctors when they had odd moments to spend reading up on recent medical bulletins or reviewing their textbooks. Dal spent more time here than the other two; the temperature of the room could be turned up, and he had developed a certain fondness for the place with its warm gray walls and its soft relaxing light. Here on the tapes were things that he could grapple with, things that he could understand. If a problem here eluded him, he could study it out until he had mastered it. The hours he spent here were a welcome retreat from the confusing complexities of getting along with Jack and Tiger.
These long study periods were boring for Fuzzy who wasn’t much interested in the oxygen-exchange mechanism of the intelligent beetles of Aldebaran VI. Frequently Dal would leave him to swing on his platform or explore about the control cabin while he spent an hour or two at the tape-reader. Today Dal had been working for over an hour, deeply immersed in a review of the intermediary metabolism of chlorine-breathing mammals, when something abruptly wrenched his attention from the tape.
It was as though a light had snapped off in his mind, or a door slammed shut. There was no sound, no warning; yet, suddenly, he felt dreadfully, frighteningly alone, as if in a split second something inside him had been torn away. He sat bolt upright, staring, and he felt his skin crawl and his fingers tremble as he listened, trying to spot the source of the trouble.
And then, almost instinctively, he knew what was wrong. He leaped to his feet, tore open the door to the cubicle and dashed down the hallway toward the control room. “Fuzzy!” he shouted. “Fuzzy, where are you?”
Tiger and Jack were both at the control panel dictating records for filing. They looked up in surprise as the Red Doctor burst into the room. Fuzzy’s platform was hanging empty, gently swaying back and forth. Dal peered frantically around the room. There was no sign of the small pink creature.
“Where is he?” he demanded. “What’s happened to Fuzzy?”
Jack shrugged in disgust. “He’s up on his perch. Where else?”
“He’s not either! Where is he?”
Jack blinked at the empty perch. “He was there just a minute ago. I saw him.”
“Well, he’s not there now, and something’s wrong!” In a panic, Dal began searching the room, knocking over stools, scattering piles of paper, peering in every corner where Fuzzy might be concealed.
For a moment the others sat frozen, watching him. Then Tiger jumped to his feet. “Hold it, hold it! He probably just wandered off for a minute. He does that all the time.”
“No, it’s something worse than that.” Dal was almost choking on the words. “Something terrible has happened. I know it.”
Jack Alvarez tossed the recorder down in disgust. “You and your miserable pet!” he said. “I knew we shouldn’t have kept him on board.”
Dal stared at Jack. Suddenly all the anger and bitterness of the past few weeks could no longer be held in. Without warning he hurled himself at the Blue Doctor’s throat. “Where is he?” he cried. “What have you done with him? What have you done to Fuzzy? You’ve done something to him! You’ve hated him every minute just like you hate me, only he’s easier to pick on. Now where is he? What have you done to him?”
Jack staggered back, trying to push the furious little Garvian away. “Wait a minute! Get away from me! I didn’t do anything!”
“You did too! Where is he?”
“I don’t know.” Jack struggled to break free, but there was powerful strength in Dal’s fingers for all his slight body build. “I tell you, he was here just a minute ago.”
Dal felt a hand grip his collar then, and Tiger was dragging them apart like two dogs in a fight. “Now stop this!” he roared, holding them both at arm’s length. “I said stop it! Jack didn’t do anything to Fuzzy, he’s been sitting here with me ever since you went back to the cubicle. He hasn’t even budged.”
“But he’s gone,” Dal panted. “Something’s happened to him. I know it.”
“How do you know?”
“I—I just know. I can feel it.”
“All right, then let’s find him,” Tiger said. “He’s got to be somewhere on the ship. If he’s in trouble, we’re wasting time fighting.”
Tiger let go, and Jack brushed off his shirt, his face very white. “I saw him just a little while ago,” he said. “He was sitting up on that silly perch watching us, and then swinging back and forth and swinging over to that cabinet and back.”
“Well, let’s get started looking,” Tiger said.
They fanned out, with Jack still muttering to himself, and searched the control room inch by inch. There was no sign of Fuzzy. Dal had control of himself now, but he searched with a frantic intensity. “He’s not in here,” he said at last, “he must have gone out somewhere.”
“There was only one door open,” Tiger said. “The one you just came through, from the rear corridor. Dal, you search the computer room. Jack, check the lab and I’ll go back to the reactors.”
They started searching the compartments off the rear corridor. For ten minutes there was no sound in the ship but the occasional slamming of a hatch, the grate of a desk drawer, the bang of a cabinet door. Dal worked through the maze of cubby-holes in the computer room with growing hopelessness. The frightening sense of loneliness and loss in his mind was overwhelming; he was almost physically ill. The warm, comfortable feeling of contact that he had always had before